And certainly, driving it wasn’t the thirty-something man with short brown hair, scraggly brown beard, wide face, wearing a pair of faded black jeans and a black jean jacket he’d seen at the hotel. At the airport and even on the plane. York might not have noticed him at all except for the tattoos on his fingers—Nazi symbols that didn’t match his exterior, visible as he sat in the dismal breakfast area of their cheap hotel, watching the flat screen, nursing a coffee and a stale danish.

York couldn’t put a finger on what it was about him—maybe he looked familiar. Call it a feeling, but York had glanced at him on their way out the door and found the man’s gaze on him something in the man’s eyes had needled him.

It was just Gregori’s words sticking in his head, There is a bounty on you, tovarish. One million Euros.

Which, he supposed, might make anyone paranoid, but it wasn’t the first time someone had hunted him.

He was getting soft.

“You all right?” Roy sat in the driver’s seat of their rental car. York’s knees were nearly in his lap, and Roy looked like he might be driving a go-cart, his knees up around the steering wheel, even as he shifted into gear. At least they were out of the snarl of traffic after landing at Leonardo Da Vinci Airport over two hours ago, standing in a line for over an hour in the rental area, and grabbing the last compact available.

“Yeah,” York said, and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Yep, only now two cars back, leaning over the road bike, helmeted and geared up in leather. “Feeling a ghost.”

“Gregori’s words getting to you?”

“I’m just tired.” He turned back around. He’d slept an hour, maybe more last night, staring at the stains in the ceiling, Roy snoring from the other queen bed. What he’d really wanted was answers, but nothing came to him, so by morning he’d showered, his wound still covered in a sort of plastic sheath they’d given him at the hospital, shaved, put on fresh jeans, re-tucked RJ’s engagement ring into his front pocket, donned a tee-shirt and felt relatively awake when he’d placed a call to his boss, Logan Thorne, in D.C.

The director of the Caleb Group, the private security think tank and concessional get it done group put together by President Isaac White was probably out running at the five-a.m. hour because he didn’t pick up.

Usually, the man had the phone glued to him.

York left a terse message, something about calling him back, then drank about a half-gallon of coffee and headed to the airport with Roy.

“How long until we get there?”

“Four hours, plus,” Roy said.